CHINA: UNDP holds basic income roundtable in Beijing

CHINA: UNDP holds basic income roundtable in Beijing

by | Oct 30, 2017 | News

In a sign of the major progress Universal Basic Income (UBI) has made in Asia, the United Nations Development Program in Beijing hosted a roundtable discussion on basic income last week. Professors from China’s most influential universities spoke at the roundtable about the potential for a basic income pilot program in China.

Patrick Haverman is the UNDP Deputy Country Director for China. Haverman said he wants to work with academia and government to determine if basic income experiments in different areas of China are feasible.

“With the Sustainable Development Goals firmly focused on the need to ‘leave no one behind’, careful consideration of a wide variety of responses will be essential,” Haverman said during his opening remarks. ”It is very important that we can foster collaborative discussions around potential options to address poverty and inequality into the future, and the role of UBI should not be overlooked.”

The roundtable also discussed the benefits and likely challenges of implementing a Universal Basic Income in China. A large topic was how UBI could improve on the dibao system, which is China’s means-tested unconditional cash transfer program. Dibao currently has issues with targeting the subsidies toward people in poverty, which many participants at the roundtable noted UBI’s universality could potentially alleviate.

Shi Li, a professor at Beijing Normal University, said Chinese people in poverty receive the dibao because of poor targeting. In his research, Li and other researchers found that nearly 88 percent of poor residents in China do not receive dibao stipends. Remarkably, administrative costs of means-testing were three times more than the actual transferred amount.

The large size and economic disparities across the mainland mean it may be difficult to implement a national UBI that is not adjusted based on residence, others noted.

The event was co-hosted by the International Labour Organization, which presented on the potential disruption of automation on employment during the roundtable. Haverman said an advantage in China is that smartphone penetration is high and many businesses now accept digital payments. This means it may be most efficient to send basic incomes to digital wallets.

“Almost everyone has a phone, so if we find a pilot zone I think we should take a look at it,” Haverman said.

Furui Cheng an associate professor at China University of Political Science and Law’s Business School, said the China Basic Income/Social Dividend Research Network is working with UNDP to plan the next steps for a pilot program in China.

Cheng said they are looking to work with local governments and raise money from technology companies.

“Basic income is the probable alternative for the future global social security system, which is facing unprecedent challenges now,” Cheng said. 

“We shall learn the experiences of global existing basic income experiments as much as possible, and we welcome any suggestions from any supporters,” she said.

Zhiyuan Cui, a professor at Tsinghua University, has written how China could emulate the Alaska Permanent Fund to implement UBI. Cui explained that Jay Hammond, the Alaskan governor who created the Permanent Fund, said he often felt “closer to Beijing than Washington DC.”

Yang Tuan of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said the size of China means it would be a good place “to come up with many types of experiments” for basic income.Tuan, who supported the implementation of dibao when she was working for China’s social security system, said the economic dynamics of China have changed since dibao started.

“(In the past) I have been against western mechanisms of social security,” she said. “But today I think the context of China is different.”

According to Haverman, the UNDP is planning to release up to three more working papers, addressing topics such as financing UBI in China, as well as its effect on work hours.

 

To see UNDP China’s press release, go here.

To see the original UNDP China working paper, go here.

To inquire about the UNDP project contact Cheng Furui: cfr1978@163.com

Podcast: Scholars research UBI to address ecological, economic crises

Podcast: Scholars research UBI to address ecological, economic crises

by | Sep 8, 2017 | Opinion

The greatest challenge of this generation is managing both environmental sustainability and a growing human population. Climate change and income inequality are making this an increasingly difficult prospect.

The Sufficiency4Sustainability Network (S4SN) is working on analyzing the intersection of these issues and the solutions that can address them.

S4SN is led by Peter Knight, a former lead economist at the World Bank. The network of researchers analyzes different policies and how they may interact with ecological and economic trends. Knight recently joined the UBI Podcast to discuss his work with S4SN.

“We’re exploring how changing values and policies might result in lower resource use by the relatively well-off, while raising the consumption of the poor to a level sufficient to meet their basic human needs on a planet with limited resources and moving toward a population of 11 billion by the end of the century,” Knight said.

The network is interested in researching Universal Basic Income (UBI), and it is included as one of the main research topics of S4SN.

“It seems to me that Universal Basic Income is right on this issue of what are the technological trends that’s going to make this important for not only economic sustainability but social, political, and ecological sustainability,” he said.

UBI is of interest to Knight because he thinks it may be an important solution to address the upcoming dramatic shifts in employment due to technology.

“I think the exponential rates of change involved in Artificial Intelligence and all those technologies that are related to Moore’s Law and their speed and cost of computation, jobs are going to be destroyed faster than they can be replaced, so UBI is a method of separating work and paid remuneration from enough to live on,” Knight said.

While Artificial Intelligence has the potential to help solve many of the problems facing humanity, Knight said, the problems it creates means that it must be coupled with a UBI.

“Exponential technologies including artificial intelligence offer potential substitutes for the limited resources, provide cleaner energy, and reduce the need for physical labor. But they also tend to concentrate income and wealth, so UBI is necessary to provide economic, social, and political sustainability,” Knight said.

For Knight, it is important to consider that the sacrifices made for environmental sustainability should not be made by the poorest among in society.

“You just can’t tell people that are starving, ‘look you’ve got to cut back your consumption. If you want their support for broader changes, you need to both change values and provide enough income to live for people who are increasingly not just manual labor, agricultural labor, industrial, but increasingly the white-collar professions are going to be displaced,” Knight said.